Mamoru Oshii, the creative force behind animated films such as the two "Patlabor" movies and "Ghost in the Shell," played a seminal role in the creation of I.G's two most recent feature films - "Jin-Roh," a Bandai Entertainment and VIZ Communications release slated for a theatrical run later this month, and "Blood," a Manga Entertainment DVD release scheduled for July.

Oshii, who wrote the story for "Jin-Roh," developed an experimental story-creation training program within Production I.G called Oshii-Juku (Oshii Cram-School). This unique program is described on the I.G website:

"A planning project, also known as the 'Oshii Juku,' started within Production I.G. This was an extremely difficult project where each member had to submit a production plan each week based on a theme presented by Oshii. And the final goal of this project was to 'create an original Oshii-Juku production plan.'"

The Oshii-Juku, a group of scriptwriters, spent almost two months creating the story for "Blood" based on Oshii's guiding themes.

The interview with Ishikawa ended up being more of a business meeting than a journalistic probing of Production I.G's ins and outs. Most everything I have on tape, mostly information about I.G's new projects, is off the record. However I can talk about their year-end party, to which I was graciously invited, but that belongs in a different section of Akadot. Kampai!

I had the chance to visit I.G again in early May.

The company has made some progress from being an animation house to a rights-owner of its work. I.G, though, is not only getting ambitious about venturing into the international market, but also about expanding the artistic and cultural scope of its staff. In April, Ishikawa hired Justin Leach, the first American that the company has ever welcomed onto its team. Leach is a youthful animator from New York whose work attracted the eye of the I.G staff.

In Leach Ishikawa-san has found another web essay victim. He's making his new American animator write a journal called "A Samurai from New York" about his life in Japan as a foreigner.

Enter Akadot's "Jin-Roh" contest here.